I use to shake my head as I thought about the half-mortgage worth of debt I would be accruing as a 22-year-old with zero years of experience as a starting teacher.
It was easy to say "poor me" as I slowly began to imagine the rich old people in suits and cigars peering down at my name on a computer screen and looking across the spreadsheet to the amount of dollar bills my interest payments would be injecting into their already bulging wallets.
I mean, I'm the future of this country; there is no economy without me, why even charge me anything for the skills our economy needs? Shouldn't they be paying me to say "Hey, I will study for four years so I can help run this whole
College was expensive. Everything from a new toothbrush in September to tuition bills in May, four years was going to cost me $60,000. I wanted to be a teacher, so debt of any kind felt a little...intimidating.
I decided I would pay off my loans in at least 20 years. I made a budget, and found that it was not only totally possible, but really, really possible to pay it all off and save some cash even on my first-year teacher salary.
In 20 years, wouldn't I want more than just pasta for dinner and leaky apartment roofs? I mean, I wanted a house and a family right? So I figured more loans would be in my future, and soon my debt life was looking like 30 or 40 years of living in some serious 40-hour-a- week job.
College debt is nothing, it's a joke. Anyone can budget their way into eating pasta four times a week and living in a shitty apartment for 10 years while working 40 hours a week. The issue is eventually you realize you want more, and that debt starts adding up. The fear sets in when you realize that no matter how much pasta you eat, you have to work in a big-kid job for a long, long time without taking any big breaks.
What if I wanted to take time off to write a book? To travel down the
I was done with school, but was I done with exploring?
Human beings are explorers, we're risk takers, we're dream followers, what part of eight hours a day in meetings with old people who have already had their lives crushed for 20+ years says 'Adventure'?
The fact that our brains evolved in the woods exploring and yet we grow up thinking 40 hours a week at a desk is normal can really mess with some people.
Why do so many people play video games? To explore. Why do so many people go on social media? To explore. Why can I still not figure out Snap Chat? I'm bad at stuff.
Eventually, you'll pay those college loans off. You'll pay those car loans off. You'll pay those rent and mortgage loans off. You'll be 50 and those loans will be toast. Good luck paddling down the Mississippi for a year catching catfish and smoking with strange men named Carl, but hey, goodbye loans.
Are you someone who punches in and out of an endless job to pay for the loan you had to take to even get that job in the first place? Are you in an endless cycle of working to live rather than living to work? Go explore for a few days away from your cell phones and microwave dinners and see for yourself.
